Susanna Wesley
This is the story of Susanna Wesley, 1669-1742 Mother of Charles and John Wesley, who were founders of the Methodist Church. Susanna and her husband, Samuel, had nineteen children, ten of whom survived to adulthood. Her son Charles became a well-known hymn writer and her son John became the found of Methodism. Susanna was brought up in a Puritan home as the youngest of twenty-five children. As a teenager, she became a member of the Church of England. She became the wife of a chronically debt-ridden parish rector in an English village. She said, "I have had a large experience of what the world calls adverse fortune." Nonetheless, Susanna managed to pass down to her children Christian principles that stayed with them.
This is the story of Susanna Wesley, 1669-1742 Mother of Charles and John Wesley, who were founders of the Methodist Church. Susanna and her husband, Samuel, had nineteen children, ten of whom survived to adulthood. Her son Charles became a well-known hymn writer and her son John became the found of Methodism.
Susanna was brought up in a Puritan home as the youngest of twenty-five children. As a teenager, she became a member of the Church of England. She became the wife of a chronically debt-ridden parish rector in an English village. She said, "I have had a large experience of what the world calls adverse fortune." Nonetheless, Susanna managed to pass down to her children Christian principles that stayed with them.
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DISAPPOINTMENTS AND PERPLEXITIES. 145<br />
is the case of the generality of men ;<br />
they live as mere<br />
animals, wholly given up to the interests and pleasures<br />
of the body ; and all the use of their understanding<br />
is to make provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts<br />
thereof, without the least regard to future happiness<br />
or misery.<br />
" I take a Kempis to have been an honest weak man,<br />
with more zeal than knowledge, by his condemning all<br />
mirth or pleasure as sinful or useless, in opposition to<br />
so many plain and direct texts of Scripture. Would<br />
you judge of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of pleasure<br />
;<br />
of the innocence or malignity of actions ? Take<br />
this rule : whatever weakens your reason, impairs the<br />
tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense<br />
God, or takes off the relish of spiritual things; in<br />
short, whatever increases the strength and authority of<br />
your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you,<br />
however innocent it<br />
may be in itself. And so on the<br />
contrary.<br />
" 'Tis stupid to say nothing is an affliction to a good<br />
man. That is an affliction that makes an affliction<br />
either to good or bad. Nor do I understand how any<br />
man can thank God for present misery, yet do I very<br />
well know what it is to rejoice in the midst of deep<br />
afflictions ;<br />
not in the affliction itself, for then would it<br />
cease to be one ;<br />
but in this we may rejoice, that we<br />
are in the hand of a God who never did and never can<br />
exert His power in any act of injustice, oppression, or<br />
cruelty, in the power<br />
of that Superior<br />
of<br />
Wisdom which<br />
disposes all events, and has promised that all things<br />
shall work together for good, for the spiritual and<br />
eternal good of those that love Him. We may rejoice<br />
in hope that Almighty Goodness will not suffer us to<br />
be tempted above that we are able, but will with the<br />
10
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